I Gave My Mom a Castle: Poems [Paperback]

Jean Little (Author), Kady MacDonald Denton (Illustrator)

Book Description

Grade Level: 4 and up

I Gave My Mom a Castle is a collection of poems about giving and receiving. This is Jean Little's first poetry collection since the still-beloved Hey World, Here I Am was published fifteen years ago. Most are prose poems, mini stories, told by a wide cast of characters from toddlers to teens with an adult or two thrown in for good measure.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 4-7-In this solid follow-up to Hey World, Here I Am! (Kids Can, 1986), Little presents a series of poems on the theme of giving and receiving gifts. The mostly free-verse offerings tell different stories about friends and family members and the special moments they share. The acts of giving range from simple things, like feeding the cat, to the heartfelt presentation of a dead worm by a young girl to her mother to affirmations of sibling affection. Little is in tune with children's feelings and perceptions as she captures the delight and the disappointment that presents can bring, and underlines the fact that love and friendship are the best gifts of all. Denton's illustrations lovingly depict the joy and pain that the characters in the poems experience. This title makes a good companion to Belinda Hollyer's The Kingfisher Book of Family Poems (Kingfisher, 2003), which includes some similar themes. A worthwhile addition to poetry shelves.-Laura Reed, Kitchener Public Library, Ontario, Canada
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 4-7. Little, the noted Canadian writer whose previous poetry book was Hey World, Here I Am! (1989), offers a new collection of prose poems based on the broadly interpreted theme of gifts. There's nothing prosaic about the collection, with its fresh voices, wit, and sometimes rueful honesty of the characters, mainly children, telling their stories in first-person, often colloquial voices. A star actress' stand-in ("She had acting talent. I had dreams of glory") relives a regrettably unforgettable night on the boards. For his birthday, a boy receives a dog completely unlike the one he has asked for and finds her quite perfect. A girl loves her cat except "when she is picking up the corpses / Of mice and moles / and the bodies of little birds / Who have sung their last song." A keen observer of emotional nuance as well as human foibles, Little creates vivid images of children within the verse, bolstered by Denton's wonderfully expressive line-and-wash drawings in blue or black, which appear on nearly every page. Carolyn Phelan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Orca Book Publishers (September 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1551432536
• ISBN-13: 978-1551432533
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,990,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars poetry that resonates, May 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: I Gave My Mom a Castle: Poems (Paperback)

I received this volume of poetry for Mother's Day and have been very pleased. These are not necessarily rhyming poems--reading more like prose than poetry. Ms Little puts into so few words pictures and emotions from childhood and about childhood, and all in a light-hearted tone. Reading them brings a smile to my face. Recommended for older teens and also adults of all ages who remember that they were children, once!!